Monday, February 23, 2009

The emergence of the Bernie Madoff financial flim-flam has people pointing to “Ponzi schemes” once again, especially as we now know Madoff made no genuine bond or stock purchases. However, when they try to use the term against Social Security, suggesting it is a “government Ponzi scheme’ they are comparing chalk and cheese.

The reason is that the 1935 Social Security law was out front in terms of how it would be funded: from current workers to current beneficiaries. (See also Michael A. Hiltzik’s ‘The Plot Against Social Security’). This is understood from the get go.

Now, forget the Madoff ruse and think of Wall Street in general, and specifically stock investments. It can be shown that they are the complete embodiment of a classical Ponzi scheme.

Consider: Company XYZ goes public and issues 10 million shares of stock to 2 million people, for $50 a share. The market capitalization here is therefore $500 million. The 2 million shareholders own variable amounts-shares, but all are priced at the stock issuance rate of $5.

Now, one particular person - Joe Schmoe - has bought 100 shares of XYZ, and so at the outset he owns $5,000 worth. Each month he buys a further 5 shares a month via “dollar cost averaging” and so invests $250 a month, or $3,000 a year..

After ten years, he’s plowed $30,000 in, and owns 596 more shares, with the share price of XYZ going up to $250 the last month of the 10th year.

After this final month, his total paper worth is 696 x $250 = $174,000.

This again is his paper worth, while he has actually put in $35,000.

So also, each XYZ investor has reaped 4.97 x more than the actual money invested. The total paper wealth has thus increased to:

4.97 x $500 million = $2, 485, 000, 000

The question becomes: What happens if ALL 2 million investors sense a crash coming and want to cash out their shares on the same day? How much would each receive on average?

This average cashout can easily be computed and works out to just $1,243 each.

This simple computation discloses that stocks and their managers prevail only by betting stock holders will not all redeem shares on the exact same day. For them to do so would be disastrous, because the company’s actual market capitalization would not support such a payout. There is simply not enough money to give all share holders what their paper profits indicate. If this isn’t a “Ponzi scheme’ I don’t know what is!

What this spread means, in concrete terms, is that when stock prices rapidly inflate most of what appears on paper is phantom money, not real money. By the same token, most of what disappears in a market crash is phantom money.

Joe Schmoe similarly, may be elated at beholding a $174,000 balance after his 10th year of holding XYZ stock, but he needs to understand that the bulk of this:

$174,000 - $35,000 = $139, 000

is phantom money.

By the same token, if the following month the share prices collapses back to $5, Joe has not lost $139, 250 but only the money he actually put in up to THAT point, or $35,250.

In a recent PARADE column (Feb. 22), Marilyn vos Savant - the magazine’s resident genius - dealt with a question related to this, which asked about investors recently losing a large amount of money and where did it go?

Her correct answer was “much of the lost money never existed”.

As we see from the illustration I gave, this is exactly true. The bulk of Joe’s money was certainly not his to lose. It merely existed temporarily in virtual or paper space. It had been subjected to what we call "asset inflation" via uptick in share price, not having more actual money.

Now, if he had the prescience and boldness to act in time, it is true he would have collected it (minus capital gains taxes). But the chances of this were actually very slim: about ½ of 1 percent of investors do a maximally profitable cashout, without any benefit of advance knowledge.

The bottom line here is that if all shareholders demanded their paper worth at the highest share price, they’d likely not get it, since it would bankrupt most companies. The real Ponzi scheme here is Wall Street’s stock scheme.

Despite this, one still sees egregious advice being given to little guys, such as ‘Keeping Your Financial Plans Afloat’ in the current U.S. News and World Report (march, p. 65) wherein it is noted that financial advisers still recommend that retirees “maintain a significant proportion exposure to stocks” But what would one assume a FA to say? Not to do so? He would soon be out of work!

The article is honest enough to go on to say:

“But investors who followed this advice are now suffering the steepest losses”

Indeed, and this will continue to happen for YEARS – perhaps even decades, as long as they remain in the market. The reason (as I noted in a previous article from last year) is that $55 trillion in credit default swaps locked in banks has still to unwind. Those who are realists believe this unwinding will continue asset deflation for a long time. Those Pollyannas who anticipate a quick “capitulation” and back toward the 10,000 DOW days of yore are in for a brutal shock as their nest eggs shrink to nothing.

The further advice (or warning) in the U.S. News piece to the effect that “Still, avoiding the stock market completely means you nest egg may not stay ahead of inflation” is not a reason to place 50% or more in stocks, or even 20%. What one must do, rather, as Vicki Robins and Joe Dominguez noted (in ‘Your Money or Your Life’) is to re-evaluate one’s spending and drop those items which are the most inflation prone in so far as possible. But risking major loss to a market Ponzi scheme is no better than playing the craps tables in Vegas.

The other interesting article in the U.S. News special finance issue was by Katy Marquardt, ‘Time to Buy Stocks or a House’ wherein she notes how people are still being advised to pass over home mortgage payouts for stock investment. According to one finance hotshot, Richard Moody – chief economist at Mission Residential:

“you always hear that owning a home is the best way to build wealth but in terms of returns it’s not that great an investment”

However, as we already saw, returns are mostly imaginary (on paper) anyway. Only a tiny percentage of stock investors actually manage to reap the high returns. Most ‘buy and HOLD’ and get incinerated later by crashes, corrections and bear markets in the process. Whereupon they must proceed to “square one”, work longer, and start all over. When will they ever learn? Maybe never.

And besides, in the stock Ponzi scheme there isn’t enough money to pay out all investors in the event they all wanted to cash out at once. So it is mostly flim-flam sold to those susceptible to the ploys, pleas and PR of finance hacks.

“Stocks seem like a simpler choice, but buying a house guarantees a huge return for me – even if it’s not financial”.

But who cares, given the financial returns of stocks are mostly smoke and mirrors for the few. (Or people, like Warren Buffet, who can afford to be wrong on when they guess the market’s capitulation to occur. Bottom line, what Buffet does or not with his billions is totally irrelevant to what investors with tiny sums of precious nest eggs and savings do.)

One final parting shot to take is at Pat Toomey, CEO of club for Growth in the same issue (p. 18, ‘Use the Free Market’) . This fool once again embraces and recommends private accounts to save Social Security and “entitlements” (a right wing buzz word if ever there was one) once and for all. But it is false, a false solution. The current market crash, with no end in sight and the DOW melting lower each day, shows personal accounts are not viable. A better solution is for the FICA income limit to be raised past $250,000 as Obama proposed during his campaign.

Toomey is even more whacked in the head when, instead of Medicare for oldsters, he alternatively proposes “accumulated savings used to purchase a health care policy at retirement”

Yes, Mr. Toomey, and please tell me WHO is going to provide such a policy to any but the most healthy and wealthy seniors? As it is, most 62- 64 year old people can’t beg, borrow or steal a policy even if they have the money. The insurance companies aren’t inclined to insure anyone over 55. If you think an over-65 person will have an easier time, you are dreaming, live on another planet, or …..detached from all modes of existing health care reality in this country.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Dr. Nancy Sniderman's reference (in a recent NBC Today interview) to vitamin therapy merely generating "expensive urine" reminded me of when I first started taking them more than 33 years ago. It was about three months before my wedding (in August, 1975) that I first met Cecil Warner, a 79-year old friend of my wife's family. He had just returned from playing 9 holes of Golf and then an hour of handball.

As he recounted the day's efforts while on my fiancee's veranda, I asked him how he did it. Where did he get the energy? What was his secret for being so fit (and not looking a day past 59). He said with a broad smile:

"My secret is vitamins. And don't let one damned soul tell you that they don't work!"

Almost from that instant, I became an unapologetic vitamin taker, incorporating them into my regimen along with a daily aspirin (this was long before people were advised to take a daily aspirin). After our wedding, my wife joined me and we have contiued thus for nearly 34 years.

Some years later, 1980 to be exact, I happened to see Durk Pearson - author of many vitamin tracts, books, on a Larry King show while in Port Charlotte, Florida. Pearson extolled the benefits, especially of lecithin and vitamin C. Not so much as cancer cures but rather as preparing the nutrient and health basis to avoid the conditions that may lead to cancer. Durk's theory was that interferon and its use by the body was augmented by a specific vitamin combination that included high doses of vitamin C.

Over the years, we have used Pearson's vitamin and mineral usage prescription, and indeed - saw it heartily endorsed by our (then) primary care physician in 1998. This physician, originally a vitamin skeptic, told me after one annual exam:

"I have finally come around to your way of thinking after doing lots of nutritional studies and seeing just how low in nutrients most modern foods, vegetables are."

Indeed!

So why then the mainstream health media's distrust of vitamins or vitamin therapy and the consistent negative thrust? Most recently, with release after press release inundating the news, slamming vitamins as "a waste of money" and asserting categorically they don't work.

I suspect the real answer goes back to an article I read some years ago, I think in 'Mother Jones' (a progressive magazine) where one economist was quoted as saying the country needs to back off its never-ending campaigns against smokers....and just let them do their thing. His point was that smoking led to much earlier deaths on average, and often before one qualified for any entitlements such as Social Security. Since the entitlements like Social Security and Medicare were "going broke" one needed to indirectly encourage a higher death rate, not a longer lifespan.

I firmly believe that this is at least partly behind the campaign to curb vitamin use. The cognoscenti of the medical matrix are rightly concerned that: a) too many millions are taking vitamins and will likely outlive their money, forcing state support, and b) their purchase of vitamins makes it less likely they will need pharmaceuticals - thereby depleting the coffers of one of the primary political campaign contributors.

Contrary to the critics, as I noted, it isn't that anyone claims vitamins "cure cancer or heart disease" or even mitigates them - but rather that they provide the nutritional basis to avoid all such conditions. As Pearson put it in his interview with King, it is known that interferon can be wielded powerfully to fight most cancers, and it is also the product of taking megadoses of vitamin C (far beyond the MDA level).

All one has to do is examine the foods available to most Americans and then realize they'd likely have to spend 4-5 times more per week than they already do in order to obtain the vitamins and nutrients needed to make vitamin therapy redundant. For many Americans today, this simply is not on, since they can barely afford what they get at the grocers (and many now have to reckon in food stamps too!)

Vitamins provide a relatively economical solution, especially in particular cases such as for vitamin D (now key in preventing colon cancer) and vitamin C. Bottom line, rather than consuming three broccoli crowns, four cabbages, five romaine lettuce heads, and ten oranges per day - one can obtain all the needed nutrients in 1 or 2 vitamin pills.

As for B-complex, I saw the value of those during the early 1970s when I used to visit a friend in the Barbados Psychiatric Hospital. I saw a stress-ridden, overly worried neurotic able to return to her life and put the valium and largatyl aside, thanks to high combined doses of B vitamins (B-6, B-1, B-12, B-3). Needless to say, since we value our mental equilibrium, both my wife and myself have incorporated 50 mg B-complex multivitamins into our regimen. We ignore any and all media reports to the effect that the B-complex combo doesn't work. To us, that is what we expect them to say.

Another aspect of vitamin therapy is one that Pearson emphasized in that 1980 interview on CNN: that is, merely attaining the minimum daily requirements (MDA) is not adequate. Especially in a stress-ridden environment and under those conditions (such as now with this economic meltdown) people need many times more the "minimum" in order to preserve health. Look at it as a far less expensive alternative to therps!

Will the mainstream gurus and sources (like those funded from Big Pharma research) disagree? Of course. This is what we fully expect, after all, since vitamin consumption by large segments of the populace challenges their vested-monied interests.

But just remember what was said earlier concerning the downsides of stopping people from smoking! As for not oultiving your money, the best advice I can give here is: don't invest your hard-earned money in the stock market, unless you can easily afford to lose it.

About Me

Specialized in space physics and solar physics, developed first astronomy curriculum for Caribbean secondary schools, has written thirteen books - the most recent:Fundamentals of Solar Physics. Also: Modern Physics: Notes, Problems and Solutions;:'Beyond Atheism, Beyond God', Astronomy & Astrophysics: Notes, Problems and Solutions', 'Physics Notes for Advanced Level&#39, Mathematical Excursions in Brane Space, Selected Analyses in Solar Flare Plasma Dynamics; and 'A History of Caribbean Secondary School Astronomy'. It details the background to my development and implementation of the first ever astronomy curriculum for secondary schools in the Caribbean.